How man eventually found his paradise

By the time Eric Domb had turned 32, he was a highly successful lawyer, had his own financial advice consultancy and was making a lot of money. Nevertheless, he says, he somehow felt dissatisfied.

Like many others, he realized, his main reason for getting into law had been to please his parents.

"I'd meet people who seemed to have lives much more exciting than mine," Domb says.

"What do you want to do with your life?" He asked himself, without realizing that he could turn his love for nature and culture into a business.

"I didn't think of that. (It's) too beautiful to be true," says Domb, now 58.

He eventually set up and became chief executive of the 75-hectare Pairi Daiza zoological park, which houses 7,000 animals, including five giant pandas, in the city of Brugelette, about 60 kilometers southwest of Brussels.

Bird park to zoo

In the early 1990s, the father-inlaw of Domb's then secretary had invited him to visit the vast piece of land, ruins of the Cistercian Cambron Abbey that traced its history to 800 years ago.

Domb, who worked in Luxembourg at the time, says that when he went to this beautiful place he almost cried.

"This is where I want to spend my life," he told himself.

After some brainstorming, the idea of building a bird park came up, one inspired by what is said to be the world's largest Weltvogelpark Walsrode, about 530 kilometers from Brussels, in Lower Saxony, northern Germany.

His father-in-law, also a businessman, supported the idea in the beginning, but when the project started to take shape he backed out.

Domb thus had to borrow money from former clients, his two brothers and father as well as a bank to build what would come to be known as Parc Paradiso.

However, after the park opened in 1994, it had become a financial nightmare. Domb said that with his inexperience he had made many mistakes, but felt he had no alternative but to push on with his venture.

By 2000, the park was turning a profit, and Domb's ambitions were growing. The park needed more than birds, he believed, and other creatures and cultural gardens would help turn it into something exceptional.

Domb, who says he has been to more than 60 countries, including China 25 times, said he wanted to have the world's best and present it to visitors in a beautiful setting.

"The more I worked, the more I knew myself because you become what you are," he said.

To Domb, finding animals from all over the world presented little difficulty－one exception being giant pandas－compared with the task of building infrastructure and paying for it. Great zoos need good infrastructure, including buildings and enclosures, as well as good keepers and experts, he said.

"When you are passionate about things, you find the right people."

One person who had a great influence on Domb was his mother, who, he said, had created a beautiful garden at home when he was young.

In 2000, Parc Paradiso was renamed Pairi Daiza, which is Persian for "walled garden". A 7,000-square-meter greenhouse, known as The Oasis, with waterfalls and tropical plants, was built that would be the habitat of several animals such as bear cuscuses and dwarf mongooses.

In the ensuing years, the 10-hectare Kingdom of Ganesha, said to be the largest Indonesian-style garden in Europe, was built. With its temples, lush vegetation and stunning views of elephants and white tigers, it takes visitors on an imaginary trip to Southeast Asia.

An area called Cambron-by-the-Sea has been transformed into an aquarium from a neoclassical castle.

In the southwestern part of the zoo, visitors find themselves in the huge Middle Kingdom, which features: a Chinese garden with a zigzag bridge and lake-center pavilion much like the one in the landmark Yuyuan Garden in Shanghai; a long corridor, or a covered walkway, found in Chinese imperial gardens; a courtyard with a teahouse surrounded by grotesque rocks; and Buddhist temples.

Chinese gardens

Domb said that since his childhood he has been fascinated by Chinese culture and inventions, his parents having displayed Chinese porcelain and Tang Dynasty (618-907) sculptures in their home. He also has a strong appreciation of Chinese silk and tea culture.

However, Domb says the idea of building a Chinese garden first occurred to him when he visited Montreal, Canada, in 1998, and marveled at the Chinese garden in the city. "Wow, this is beautiful," he said to himself.

When he contacted the Shanghai Institute of Landscape Design and Architecture, which designed and built the garden in Montreal, he found he was not taken seriously because he lacked official connections.

"But I was very stubborn," Domb said. His efforts paid off when the Shanghai company finally sent workers to build the Chinese garden in 2005.

After the first Chinese garden, Dream of Han Wu Di, was completed in 2006 as what was said to be the largest Chinese garden in Europe, Domb kept adding new elements. It finally took more than six years to complete the project.

"It's a discovery," he said of the entire process of building the Chinese gardens.

Domb has traveled to China every year since 2004, sometimes twice a year. He relished his trips to Suzhou to appreciate its traditional Chinese gardens, to Fujian to discover the tea culture, to Jingdezhen to search for Chinese porcelain and to Yixing for Chinese pottery.

He now describes employees of the Shanghai company as "no longer clients" but "real friends" and "good friends" who totally trust each other.

Domb was eager to tell of how he received a pair of giant pandas in February 2014 after just one and a half years of efforts while it usually takes at least 10 years for many zoos to do so. The sense of pride is all the more profound in that Pairi Daiza is one of the few private zoos outside China to house giant pandas.

He attributed the success to the Chinese gardens that had already been built in the zoo and his friendship with China's ambassador to Belgium from 2011 to 2014, Liao Liqiang, and Chinese people in general.

"I've worked for years with Chinese. I'm used to eating Chinese food and I'm used to drinking Chinese wine," he said, citing stinky bean curd and chicken feet as among his favorite Chinese cuisine and emptying a small cup containing baijiu, a hard liquor distilled from fermented sorghum, as one of his most enjoyable moments when he meets Chinese friends.

Human relationship

"These human relationship also played a role in the story," he said.

At that time, staff of Antwerp Zoo believed it was impossible to get giant pandas from China, Domb said, and when they learned about Pairi Daiza's ambitions, their efforts at accomplishing the feat were too late.

In September 2013, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and then Belgian prime minister Elio Di Rupo signed an agreement in the Chinese seaside city of Dalian for a joint giant panda breeding program.

Domb and his people spent the following months frenetically building giant panda houses with no guarantee that Pairi Daizi would be fortunate enough to take charge of giant pandas. The huge enclosure built includes a pool, cave and bamboo plantation.

Around noon on Sunday, February 23, 2014, male Xing Hui (Twinkling Star) and female Hao Hao (Nicely), two four-year-old giant pandas, landed at Brussels airport on a cargo flight and were greeted in a ceremony by Di Rupo. They would be on loan from the Chinese government for 15 years.

Domb said he was given the opportunity to pick giant pandas but he told his Chinese friends at Wolong in Sichuan that they should choose them for him.

"And they made a wonderful choice," Domb said, referring to Hao Hao for giving birth to three cubs at Pairi Daizi.

Tian Bao (Treasure of Heaven), a male cub, was born on June 2, 2016, after artificial insemination with sperm from Xing Hui, and the twins Bao Di (Little Brother) and Bao Mei (Little Sister) were born on Aug 8 last year.

"It's fantastic to have a dragon and a phoenix," Domb said at a news conference a day after the twins were born.

The second cub was unexpected, he said. He waited for four hours in front of the mother Hao Hao for the first birth. "Two hours later we were a little bit tired. Somebody shouted, 'There is another one'," he said, with excitement in his eyes.

"She is the perfect mother. She is fantastic. She is sweet with keepers. They are beautiful and fantastic animals."

While the zoo has a Chinese keeper for the giant pandas, experts were flown in from China every time in preparation for the artificial insemination and birth.

March 30, 2014, was a memorable day for Domb, when China's President Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan, accompanied by Belgium's King Philippe and Queen Mathilde, visited the zoo to inaugurate the giant panda garden, including planting a magnolia tree.

"We were very honored," Domb said of the visit, the first to the zoo by a head of state other than the Belgian king." We had a wonderful time."

Xi's visit

Xi was on a trip to the Netherlands, France, Germany, Belgium and European Union headquarters.

Because giant pandas born outside China also belong to China and must return to China at the age of four for breeding and conservation purposes, Tian Bao was originally due to return to China in December, but Domb said a new date has been set: Jan 3.

The departure needs to be handled delicately because visitors will be sad to see Tian Bao leave, Domb said, and tears will no doubt be shed.

"He is the most popular Chinese in Belgium.… Everybody loves him."

It is possible Tian Bao's departure may be postponed again because of travel restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, he said.

The presence of the twins born in August would help reduce the stress relating to Tian Bao's departure.

Bao Di and Bao Mei made their public appearance on Dec 13, and now often play with mother Hao Hao in the yard.

This year Domb has bought land in France that used to supply bamboo to Pairi Daiza. He can now supply bamboo to other European zoos that also house giant pandas, such as Beauval Zoo in Saint-Aignan, France, he said.

Bamboo accounts for 99 percent of giant pandas' diet. Calgary Zoo in Canada announced in May that it plans to return two giant pandas to China because of a shortage of bamboo caused by flight disruptions during the pandemic.

Domb described the matter of bamboo supplies as crucial, and since owning the bamboo land in France, the five giant pandas at Pairi Daiza have got to try different bamboos.

"They're satisfied," he said.

COVID-19 has hurt the zoo's bottom line, and Domb expects a big financial loss this year after years of profit. The number of visitors has almost halved and the zoo was forced to remain closed from March to May. Last year it had nearly 2.17 million visitors.

But the blow this time around is nothing like the one to the bird park back in 1994 when Domb hoped to turn back the clock for two years and "forget the place" as he recalled.

"Now, I don't regret. It's such a nice place. We have wonderful people, making it better and better every year," he said.